Day 4—Sunday, July 3rd—Nazca and Huacachina

the astronaut
Originally uploaded by rswells.

Since we didn’t have any official tour set up to fly across the mysterious Nazca Lines, Tali and I took a taxi to Ica in order to take a 3-hour bus south to Nazca. The movie for this bus ride: TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES. To our extreme surprise, Claire Danes was one of the stars—Was anyone else aware of this? After the flick and the mini-invasion of a few flies into our immediate surroundings, some VH1 CLASSICS came on next. The videos included one by Rod Stewart and a back-to-back showing of the same song, Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It!” (I think the second one contained an alternate beginning.)

The whole reason any tourist gets down to Nazca is to fly over these lines to which I’ve been referring. The game sets up with about a dozen companies that all offer 35-minute flights over said lines and attracted people from all over the world, few of which seemed to speak any Spanish whatsoever. We arrive around 11.00am, booked a flight for 2.00pm and walked down the road to get an early lunch. A youngish American couple from New Hampshire sat at the table across from us. We chatted for a little while about our respective adventures in Perú up until that point. They were on their “real” honeymoon after taking a cruise with family and friends a few months earlier: an intense, 5.30am wakeup, 10-day action-packed trek of a honeymoon, that is. They had just watched Gus Van Sant’s fictional take on the Columbine shootings, ELEPHANT, on their bus ride. Like them, and surely anyone else who has seen this slow slow chill of a movie, I had no idea why this film would be shown to an unsuspecting audience in such a way. When I said we’d watched T3, the guy responded with, “Oh, man! That’s awesome!” (Neither of them knew that Claire Danes played the female lead either, nor had they seen BATMAN BEGINS yet—no time for movies for them.) You could kinda tell that the guy was itching to talk to another guy because he was really digging my travel jokes and anecdotes, especially my description of Huacachina as being fit for the x games crowd and the story of how I almost shit myself trying to run up one of the dunes. Plus, his new wife was the one with the guidebook—if you know what I mean.

Our flight scheduled for 2.00 didn’t end up taking off until 4.30. Before we took off, Tali was so nervous she was shaking and tried to compose herself with some Lamaze type breathing techniques. It didn’t help that the plane that took off before ours didn’t really take off per se on its first try. Nor did it help that once airborne the pilot kept taking his hands off the controls and turning around to face us passengers in order to explain what figure was coming up next. He banked steeply and frequently so that both sides could get a good look at whatever lay below. For me, the most impressive figure was the ASTRONAUT, with the MONKEY, and the HUMMINGBIRD coming in with the silver and the bronze. As we approached a figure, the pilot would be all like, “Okay, it’s right there to the right! There it is! Can you see it? It’s right there. Look under the wing.” And, of course, I couldn’t see shit for the first few seconds, but then these lines came together to form shapes which subsequently came together to form recognizable figures. Once we landed, Tali admitted to me that the lines were more impressive to her than Machu Picchu.

Our evening bus back to Ica was packed to the point where the standing passengers lined the entire aisle and included a Steven Seagal movie whose title translates to BLOODY FACE 4. Back in Huacachina for another night, we ended this one with pancakes filled with dulce de leche for dinner.